Breadcrumb Trail Links

Culture of accountability at city hall finally taking hold: city auditor

Author of the article:

Elise Stolte

Publishing date:

August 30, 2018 • 2 minute read

City auditor David Wiun.Photo by Shaughn Butts/ Postmedia

Edmonton’s city auditor added a silver lining to his latest critique involving an investigation into fraud allegations among city contractors that ended after time left the trail cold.

In this case, auditor David Wiun was trying to investigate allegations city officials knew about and failed to report three years ago. But he said if the same thing were happening today, he’s convinced he would get the call on time.

Distroscale

“There are always going to be missteps and things that go awry,” Wiun told city council’s audit committee Thursday. But “one thing that has changed is (corporate leadership) is trying to deal with issues as they happen.”

“I’m confident there will be … fewer of these investigations and audit reports in the future.”

This audit involved eServices, a five-year attempt to move city applications and permitting processes online that went $5.4 million over budget and largely failed to deliver.

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Wiun and his team found the information technology contractor supervising the project hired business partners to do the work without disclosing their relationship.

Under a complex hiring process, the city had little oversight to control the rates paid and hours charged to the project. But what the motives were and whether the people in charge personally benefited from decisions made, Wiun could not determine.

He approached police with his findings. They were not able to launch a meaningful investigation either. “The trail is cold,” he said. “Unfortunately, there was a lack of documentation.”

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

An audit report first released last week said eServices started in 2010 and was cancelled in 2015 when city administration first learned about the conflict of interest allegations and did an internal investigation. Council has been wrestling with how to ensure appropriate oversight and accountability for years, especially after several challenging audits, including on a poorly-supervised contract to recycle sand, a developer-funded reserve that operated more like a city slush fund, and the waste management branch falling far behind on its landfill diversion targets.

Council blamed a culture of departmental silos and launched a massive city reorganization. Training was increased in contract management and conflict of interest provisions are now clearly spelled out in the employee code of conduct.

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

The eServices effort was relaunched after the first failure, this time focused on finding off-the-shelf solutions rather than writing code specifically for Edmonton.

With $6.5 million spent, officials now have 13 different types of applications online. Residents and businesses are choosing to use those online forms between 78 per cent and 100 per cent of the time, said city administration.

The next step is to allow businesses to submit commercial and industrial permit applications online.